Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A Connecticut Civil War Volunteers’ Service Medal attributed to Private G. A. Frink, 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, late Commissary Sergeant, Field and Staff, 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Infantry

Connecticut Volunteers’ Service Medal 1861-65, bronze, unnamed, the reverse officially numbered ‘532’, complete with ‘Connecticut Minutemen April 1861’ top brooch bar, very fine £240-£280

George Arthur Frink was a naturalised Canadian born in 1838, and who enlisted as a private soldier in Company C, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry on 22 April 1861. When the regiment was mustered in to federal service on 7 May, the company letter was altered to G. On 18 July he transferred to the regimental staff, and although the State rosters record his rank as a Commissary Sergeant, the pension records note that in other infantry regiments at this time the commissaries held the rank of First Lieutenant. At the time the three Connecticut regiments were serving in the defences of Washington but on 16 July, they set out for Centreville, Virginia, as a part of Colonel Erasmus D. Keys’ First Brigade, part of General Daniel Tyler’s First Division, of the Army of North-eastern Virginia, and was engaged in the First Battle of Bull Run on 31 July.

The 2nd Connecticut Volunteer Infantry then re-joined the Washington defences before returning home where it was mustered out on 7 August 1861. Frink did not serve again. After the war he lived in New York till his death in 1914. In 1905 he applied for a federal pension, and after his death his wife applied for a widow’s pension.

The Connecticut Volunteers’ Service Medal 1861
In May 1903 the State of Connecticut authorised the production of a medal to be awarded to members of the First, Second and Third Regiments of Connecticut Volunteers who answered Lincoln’s ‘first call’ for troops in April of 1861. Posthumous awards were also authorised. By September 1904, 634 had been awarded. No further figures were published but the medals were numbered on the reverse and numbers have been seen as high as 781. The State’s list of recipients does not go beyond No. 730. There are a few gaps in these numbers and several examples of second awards. Of the men that were in awarded these medals, at least 468 served again in another other Connecticut unit, three of whom earned the Medal of Honor during this service. Its rarity compares with that of the army’s Civil War Medal with the traceable “No.” numbers, and the West Virginia Medal for soldiers killed in battle.

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